Abstract:

Accessibility and a ordability of transport have a major impact on the people living in a
country. Accessibility is de ned as the ease with which people are able to reach activities
or destinations (Litman, 2010a), whilst transport a ordability is de ned as the ability
to purchase access (Litman, 2010b). In South Africa, the way in which accessibility and
a ordability of transport are currently measured is insu cient, as people's needs are not
taken into consideration. In this project, the objective is to develop metric, a standard
of measurement, which quanti es the performance of these aspects within the transport
system. The Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan is used as the study area since it is
relatively isolated, providing a relevant representation of reality. The various factors that
a ect accessibility and a ordability are researched in order to understand what impact
these factors have on the transport system. Previous measures that have been used
to assess accessibility and a ordability in other countries, are taken into account when
designing the metric. Data is gathered from a variety of sources, predominantly surveys
carried out by Statistics South Africa. Using a synthetic population and a multi-agent
transport simulation toolkit (MATSim), the transport system is simulated and used to test
the feasibility of the metric. The development of a metric is a bene t to the government
as it assists in the planning and assessing of the transport system in South Africa, as well
as enabling the testing of strategies that will assist in uplifting the poor.